3 ms·

1) i am as ready to shit on apple and siri as the next guy, but imo the HN cynicism is overbearing here. apple isnt building to impress internet neckbeards like

by swyx 2y ago

1) i am as ready to shit on apple and siri as the next guy, but imo the HN cynicism is overbearing here. apple isnt building to impress internet neckbeards like us. they are building for the normies. features they understand intuitively and cannot fuck up. maybe wait til it gets in the normies hands to judge. ~none of us here know what its like to work on a hardware/software platform for >1 billion? people. 2) i actually do think dedicated visual intelligence button IS a killer feature. suddenly phone is ai's view into the world. yes probably v1 today will disappoint. but 5 years from now the kids will laugh when we say we had to take photos and upload them to an app back in our day. or manually enter in any information from the real world into our calendars and emails and texts.

tsunamifury 2y ago
Highly doubt normies give a crap about any of this.
- consteval 2y ago
  What? How could you possibly say that? They can take a picture of something and then auto make a note, or a reminder, or an email, or find out what it is. Normies struggle with the nuance of devices. They understand what they want, they don't understand steps, like start here then do this, then go here and copy this, then go there. This SKIPS all the steps. This is huge for them, but (probably) just mildly convenient for others.
  - hobermallow 2y ago
    >find out what it is Google Googles did this 13 years ago https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Goggles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Goggles It remains interesting to me how much we have been able to do, already, with technology. But discoverability, walled gardens, and <hand waving>marketing/positioning/hype</hand waving> have obscured awareness/adoption.
  - tsunamifury 2y ago
    This is really really old tech that normies definitely do not care about.
- motoxpro 2y ago
  Asking when your moms flight gets in, to pull up the picture of you and your partner on vacation at the beach or to take a picture of a restaurant from afar at 5x zoom and get reviews is insanely nice. This is the perfect use of AI, at least for me.
randmeerkat 2y ago
> apple isnt building to impress internet neckbeards like us. they are building for the normies. features they understand intuitively and cannot fuck up. maybe wait til it gets in the normies hands to judge. Apple has lost its way, just look at how the "normies" and the "neckbeards" responded to the Vision Pro. Apple doesn't know how to innovate anymore, just how to market, and mass produce things, which is honestly good enough to keep making money for now.
- lurking_swe 2y ago
  you’re suggesting apple planned to sell a $3.5k headset to normies? That doesn’t make sense. Sure, many normies had an opinion on it. Most normies never tried it so i don’t care what they think. It’s like asking a normie 20 years ago about what driving an electric car is like. Vision pro was an over-hyped dev kit that offers a taste of the future. That’s it.
  - jdsully 2y ago
    They have classes full of "normies" trying them out every time I pass by my local store. Sure looks like its meant to be something other than a dev kit to me.
- Terretta 2y ago
  > Apple has lost its way, just look at how the "normies" and the "neckbeards" responded to the Vision Pro. Such people are likely confused. The AVP makes sense as a high end POC and dev kit. It takes a minute for a new modality of computing to make sense to people, even for Apple's own devs to figure out how people can use it, to iterate the OS and default app suite for a few years.
najork 2y ago
Agreed, and Apple's differentiator has always been seamless integration. With the iPhone, they own the boundary layer between the physical and digital worlds. It's an obvious place to introduce AI for daily tasks without requiring any behavioral changes from the users.
zombiwoof 2y ago
I agree but all the normies I know say Siri is shit or just have it disabled They aren’t that dumb to think calling it now Apple intelligence powered will make Siri work
awfulneutral 2y ago
As a "tech person" I feel like we've all been told for 20+ years that we can't have UX that makes any sense to us, or lets us do simple things we want to do, because we are power users and software has to cater to some imagined demographic of incredibly dumb people who can't understand basic computing metaphors. It can get frustrating.
- jimbokun 2y ago
  Which would be fine if they easily allowed us to write software and scripts for our own devices.
  - evilduck 2y ago
    Shortcuts.app exists, you can even tie those scripts to a hardware button now or ask Siri to execute them or place them as app-like icons or as interactive widgets on your home screen or Lock Screen, or tie them to automation events (schedules, but even more fine grained like "when I get a message from this person, send them an email", or "when I get home, log the current weather to a new line in a table on a spreadsheet". A script gallery even exists where scripts can easily be shared and ran by anyone or shared across iMessages. Not everything is available like on a rooted Android of course, but I can at least create a Shortcut script and give it to any iOS user regardless of their technical expertise and they can utilize it, which is leagues ahead of the situation amongst non-rooted Android and non-technical Android users.
- kridsdale3 2y ago
  I'm a Growth Engineer. What that actually means is "make the UI so incredibly simple people who are functionally illiterate somehow make their way to the place you want them to be so you can eventually monetize them". I view users moving through interfaces in a mass abstracted form like electrical or hydrological currents. My job is to widen the pipes.
  - awfulneutral 2y ago
    Well, cynically that fits with my own experience. :) But I don't know if I'd say it's simpler, just that you don't have any choices. For me Apple UX often feels complicated and I can't figure out how to do what I want, or figure out what is going to happen when I accept some dialog they want me to accept. But I guess I end up going through the pipe eventually, out of frustration. My impression of my non-tech friends is that they aren't too dumb to follow instructions, they just don't enjoy operating a computer like I do, so they are more okay with their choices being restricted if they don't have to waste time doing something they find boring.

by swyx 2y ago

tsunamifury 2y ago

Highly doubt normies give a crap about any of this.

consteval 2y ago
What? How could you possibly say that? They can take a picture of something and then auto make a note, or a reminder, or an email, or find out what it is. Normies struggle with the nuance of devices. They understand what they want, they don't understand steps, like start here then do this, then go here and copy this, then go there. This SKIPS all the steps. This is huge for them, but (probably) just mildly convenient for others.
- hobermallow 2y ago
  >find out what it is Google Googles did this 13 years ago https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Goggles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Goggles It remains interesting to me how much we have been able to do, already, with technology. But discoverability, walled gardens, and <hand waving>marketing/positioning/hype</hand waving> have obscured awareness/adoption.
- tsunamifury 2y ago
  This is really really old tech that normies definitely do not care about.
motoxpro 2y ago
Asking when your moms flight gets in, to pull up the picture of you and your partner on vacation at the beach or to take a picture of a restaurant from afar at 5x zoom and get reviews is insanely nice. This is the perfect use of AI, at least for me.

randmeerkat 2y ago

> apple isnt building to impress internet neckbeards like us. they are building for the normies. features they understand intuitively and cannot fuck up. maybe wait til it gets in the normies hands to judge. Apple has lost its way, just look at how the "normies" and the "neckbeards" responded to the Vision Pro. Apple doesn't know how to innovate anymore, just how to market, and mass produce things, which is honestly good enough to keep making money for now.

lurking_swe 2y ago
you’re suggesting apple planned to sell a $3.5k headset to normies? That doesn’t make sense. Sure, many normies had an opinion on it. Most normies never tried it so i don’t care what they think. It’s like asking a normie 20 years ago about what driving an electric car is like. Vision pro was an over-hyped dev kit that offers a taste of the future. That’s it.
- jdsully 2y ago
  They have classes full of "normies" trying them out every time I pass by my local store. Sure looks like its meant to be something other than a dev kit to me.
Terretta 2y ago
> Apple has lost its way, just look at how the "normies" and the "neckbeards" responded to the Vision Pro. Such people are likely confused. The AVP makes sense as a high end POC and dev kit. It takes a minute for a new modality of computing to make sense to people, even for Apple's own devs to figure out how people can use it, to iterate the OS and default app suite for a few years.

najork 2y ago

Agreed, and Apple's differentiator has always been seamless integration. With the iPhone, they own the boundary layer between the physical and digital worlds. It's an obvious place to introduce AI for daily tasks without requiring any behavioral changes from the users.

zombiwoof 2y ago

I agree but all the normies I know say Siri is shit or just have it disabled They aren’t that dumb to think calling it now Apple intelligence powered will make Siri work

awfulneutral 2y ago

As a "tech person" I feel like we've all been told for 20+ years that we can't have UX that makes any sense to us, or lets us do simple things we want to do, because we are power users and software has to cater to some imagined demographic of incredibly dumb people who can't understand basic computing metaphors. It can get frustrating.

jimbokun 2y ago
Which would be fine if they easily allowed us to write software and scripts for our own devices.
- evilduck 2y ago
  Shortcuts.app exists, you can even tie those scripts to a hardware button now or ask Siri to execute them or place them as app-like icons or as interactive widgets on your home screen or Lock Screen, or tie them to automation events (schedules, but even more fine grained like "when I get a message from this person, send them an email", or "when I get home, log the current weather to a new line in a table on a spreadsheet". A script gallery even exists where scripts can easily be shared and ran by anyone or shared across iMessages. Not everything is available like on a rooted Android of course, but I can at least create a Shortcut script and give it to any iOS user regardless of their technical expertise and they can utilize it, which is leagues ahead of the situation amongst non-rooted Android and non-technical Android users.
kridsdale3 2y ago
I'm a Growth Engineer. What that actually means is "make the UI so incredibly simple people who are functionally illiterate somehow make their way to the place you want them to be so you can eventually monetize them". I view users moving through interfaces in a mass abstracted form like electrical or hydrological currents. My job is to widen the pipes.
- awfulneutral 2y ago
  Well, cynically that fits with my own experience. :) But I don't know if I'd say it's simpler, just that you don't have any choices. For me Apple UX often feels complicated and I can't figure out how to do what I want, or figure out what is going to happen when I accept some dialog they want me to accept. But I guess I end up going through the pipe eventually, out of frustration. My impression of my non-tech friends is that they aren't too dumb to follow instructions, they just don't enjoy operating a computer like I do, so they are more okay with their choices being restricted if they don't have to waste time doing something they find boring.